Let me enforce an open door here 😜
At work and in life, everything starts and ends with us human beings… People!
As much as there’s hardly anything worth it more in this life than love (and perhaps finding/sharing your purpose), there’s also hardly anything more worth it at work than really engaging, heart to heart, soul to soul, with people, influencing them in the noble sense of the word, and getting influenced by them, to create magic together.
So it hardly comes as a surprise that developing our ‘community of kindred spirits’ is of the essence here. Certainly if you’re in the collaboration and/or facilitation business.
At least, that is if you want to maintain your energy against the cynical and countering forces on the way to the change you want to see. And also if you want to keep your eyes on your purpose.
Why create a community around us?
Why enforce this open door?
Because our increasingly materialistic and individualistic world (mixed with an unwelcome layer of retreating into our private caves through the COVID lockdown experience) can easily keep us away from deepening connections with one another.
With that individualistic mindset, it can be tempting, or even just unconsciously easy, to just grab, grab, grab everywhere (Me! Me! Me!) without giving back.
That is NOT a community approach. And though it may help in the short run, it most certainly doesn’t in the long run.
And then, I’m also enforcing this open door because in the past few weeks countless experiences have kept bringing me back to this: ‘duh!! It’s all about community’
We just completed our first ever Liberating Journey and that has been an INCREDIBLE experience, so full of learning and confusiasm, discoveries, energy, failings, adaptations, celebration, support, warmth. But the red thread of it all has been… community and connection. With our 10 explorers, Nadia, Jeremy and I have hosted a group of people that became a pretty tight-knit community of Liberating Structures explorers (us included!). So much so that the group is now hellbent on keeping gatherings going to stay in touch and keep learning together. As for the learning on the Liberating Journey itself, more is coming up pretty soon on this blog!
Of course community is the be-all-end-all of a… community such as Never Done Before (#NDB), the facilitation community. Week in week out many of us find resources, ask questions, find answers, find next questions, find help, find opportunities, find courage, face failings, metabolise learning into precious experience through the community. And various NDB sessions I’ve attended recently have only further highlighted the importance of having a community of friends or peers that can help you in your practice, learning and presence (how you show up).
I’m about to get into the next cycle of the ever-excellent study group on ‘multi-stakeholder collaboration’ hosted by Community At Work (C@W) and there again I find that the community spirit is, together with the high professionalism and preparedness of our C@W mentors, at the heart of the incredible energy that this study group provides me – enough in any case to make me want to get up at 3am 6 to 8 times a year for 3 hours of exchange ending in the wee hours of my morning.
Convene is quickly becoming a professional family also. On top of the soul-tinkling work that they do, and the original friendship with Amanda that has brought me close to Convene, it’s really the community spirit that is permeating throughout everything Conveners do, together with the amazing ‘constellation’ they’ve conjured up, that makes me want to work more with them.
And then on the back of all that is my own community of friends which brings together some members of all the above-mentioned communities also. The generosity of my own community, their kind heart, their inspiring soul, their incredible wit and wisdom, have brought me so much energy, pleasure, inspiration and opportunities that my gratitude will never be enough to pay the tribute back to them.
Community is what has always ‘kept the fire alive’ for me, as this metaphor came on my path brought along by another community I used to be a very active member of (Knowledge Management for Development / KM4Dev). I wouldn’t be who I am and do what I do without these communities.
Developing our community is a no-brainer. It’s an obvious win for everyone, just like a smile 😃
So now the why is clear, how to build a community?
This is a message to all of you wondering how to find the energy, ideas, inspiration, comfort, next moves… If you’re working on collaborative change it’s a drudging path at times. Cynicism is rife, self-doubt and the ‘imposter syndrome‘ affect us all, and the magnitude of change we want to see can lead to despair when we put on our grey-shaded glasses, out of fatigue or otherwise.
If you don’t surround yourself with people that keep your fire alive, your fire can be suffocated by the inertia, negativity, resistance, or downright conflict with others, let alone by your inner saboteur.
So here are a few ideas for how to build that community – not pretending to be exhaustive here:
- If you have found your craft, your niche, your focus, hell even better: your ikigai, then look around for communities that exist out there in relation to it. Mingle, sniff, sense, feel if they are for you. And if they are, let go of any resistance and embrace the beauty of joining such a community;
- Once you are in a community, there’s nothing wrong about being silent or passive (that means you’re an empowered listener) but there is SO MUCH MORE to gain from being active, asking questions, sharing resources and experiences, hosting things, taking responsibilities. It just keeps on giving…
- As the saying above goes, find your mentors, follow people you respect and admire (healthily 😉 and ask them to be mentored by them. If they’re humane – and have the time for it, which may be more the issue – they will more often than not agree to it. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my 15 years of focus on knowledge management and learning, it is that the apprenticeship model of the medieval guilds is one of the surest ways to build deep, reliable expertise (notwithstanding an incredible journey of personal development!)
- With all your authenticity and integrity (the monthly theme of #NDB in April 2024), cultivate your own network of people who resonate with you – and hopefully reciprocally – as that is your professional family of friends, the people that have your back, and you have theirs. It’s such a rich exploration and voyage through life to have kindred spirits at your side.
- If you can, also try and develop a space for a community of ‘loving provocateurs’, the people that give you the truth without hiding behind political correctness; the devil’s advocates that call things out when they see it; the friends that help you realise your own blind spots and keep your natural excesses in check. It’s challenging, perfectly annoying at times, but so precious and important!
- And all the while, remember to share and give as much as you receive, and to cultivate gratitude for it.
🤔❓ What do you do to create and cultivate your community/ies?
PS. As a short tangent, I’ve updated the ‘about’ page on my website with a section on my professional ‘family of friends’.
agilefacil 
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